Hello, fellow Vault dweller! Whether you have already toured through the remnants of Capital Wasteland and the New California Republic or you’re a greenhorn venturing into the irradiated ruins for the first time, these tips will boost your chances for survival and even give you a leg up on the dangerous encounters you’re bound to find yourself in.
Explore, Explore, Explore
The critical path isn’t everything in Fallout 4. In fact, the game is most enjoyable when you forget about your lengthy list of quests and simply venture into the great unknown, taking in the sights and investigating those new markers showing up on your compass.
Hack Smart
Players are given four tries to hack a computer terminal. If you fail out, you have to wait a handful of seconds before attempting again. If you’re on your fourth attempt and still don’t have a lead on cracking the code, we recommend simply backing out and starting over to avoid temporarily locking yourself out.
Don’t Wear Power Armor While Exploring
The power armor is a great boon in combat scenarios, but the fusion cores needed to operate it aren’t abundant. Rather than waste that precious energy walking across the Commonwealth, we recommend exploring without it and retrieving the power armor only when you know you are walking into a combat-centric scenario.
Light Things Up
Exploring a dingy raider hideout? Don’t forget that your PIP Boy doubles as a flashlight – hold in the Circle or B button to shine some light on your environment. If you can’t stand the sickly green glow, you can change the color of your PIP Boy in the display settings of the option menu, which in turn changes the color of your flashlight. Select a white hue with a tint of yellow, and it will be indistinguishable from a normal flashlight.
Dress For The Occasion
Before you go into town or engage in some in-mission dialogue, change into a more charismatic outfit. No one wants to flirt or offer a bargain to a guy dressed in gross raider armor, so always carry clothes and accessories that offer charisma bonuses. Changing into the debonair threads may give you the personality boost you needed to trend the conversations in the direction you intend them to go.
Talk To Everyone
Expect to run into a lot of strange and interesting people during your time in the Commonwealth. While some are there for simple entertainment, you never know who is going to throw a quest your way, so it pays to play the role of politician and try to meet as many people as you can as you move through a settlement or city.
Hoard Everything
Television shows like Hoarders give viewers a glimpse into the tortured psyches of people who just can’t let go of possessions, but Fallout 4 makes us think these people may just be living in the wrong era. In the Wasteland, everything offers value for crafting weapons, armor, and structures in your settlements. Even innocuous items like aluminum cans yield critical resources you can use to build better scopes for your rifles. Before venturing away from a settlement, dump all non-essential gear so you have more room for gathering whatever odds and ends you come across.
Don’t Bother Selling Guns And Armor
The Commonwealth economy seems to devalue weapons. Don’t expect to fetch good rates for common gear; in fact, once you have the Scrapper perk, it’s more worthwhile to break down weapons for rare components like circuitry, nuclear material, and copper than it is to earn a couple extra bottlecaps in trade. Even if you don’t have the Scrapper perk yet, we recommend stashing your unwanted weapons at a settlement so you can harvest the materials later.
Get Hacking And Lockpicking Perks Early
Nothing in Fallout 4 is more annoying than clearing out an abandoned facility of feral ghouls, then stumbling upon a safe or terminal that requires a higher-level skill to pick or hack. With hundreds of unexplored buildings still littering your map, what are the chances you’ll remember to come back to this location? That’s why we recommend leveling your lockpicking and hacking skills as soon as you can.
The Gun Nut Perk Is Another Great Investment
When you first venture out of Vault 111, you aren’t going to be coming across the stronger weaponry any time soon. But with the Gun Nut perk, you can give the dime-a-dozen raider guns decent damage and accuracy boosts by improving the barrels, stocks, scopes, etc.
Plan Ahead When Picking Perks
You can’t unlock every perk in one playthrough, so we recommend charting out your long-term plans early on to make sure you don’t get locked out of that end-game ability you want to see in action.
Read on to learn more about companions, V.A.T.S., and settlement building.